For some God-awful reason they are...of course when you disassemble them and use their carcasses as scrap for your other creations...then they don't.

Well, think of it this way:

Battle Droids and Stormtroopers essentially serve in the same capacity (that is, cannon fodder), but a stormtrooper is clearly a minifig. I consider the droids to be equivalent to the average minifig, if for nothing other than gameplay purposes.